CNN's GUT CHECK | for January 21, 2013 | 5 p.m.
– n. a pause to assess the state, progress or condition of the political news cycle

FOUR MORE YEARS: IN INAUGURAL SPEECH, OBAMA SEEKS TO TIE CURRENT ISSUES TO FOUNDING PRINCIPLES… President Barack Obama sought to link the past and future on Monday in his second inaugural address, tying the nation’s founding principles to the challenges confronting his second term in a call for Americans to fulfill the responsibility of citizenship. Obama cited the accomplishments of the past four years while laying out a progressive agenda for the next four that would tackle thorny issues such as gun control, climate change and immigration reform. – Tom Cohen

SAVORING THE MOMENT: As he was leaving the West front of the Captiol after his speech, Obama stopped, turned around, and paused to take one final look out at the sea of supporters who braved the cold temperature to watch his Inauguration speech: “I want to take a look one more time. I'm not going to see this again.”

THE PRESIDENT’S SECOND TERM PARTNERS:Biden on Obama at start of second term: 'Totally simpatico' After four years in which he has alternately helped - and miffed - the White House, Vice President Joe Biden told CNN that his role as the deal-closer is clearly his most comfortable yet. "I have spent a lot of time in this town. And I have personal relationships with people I strongly disagree with, but there's trust. And so, I'm a logical person, a logical person to, as they say or you guys say, close the deal," Biden told CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger in an exclusive pre-inaugural interview. – Kevin Bohn

First lady to help promote presidential agenda: A bright spotlight will shine on first lady Michelle Obama Monday as inauguration watchers focus on her clothes, new hairstyle, and to what length she has gone to shield her children from the public eye. But beyond the pomp of the inaugural festivities, the first lady will play a role in helping to try and advance her husband's policy goals over the next four years through a fractured Congress in a divided nation. – Mark Preston

EXCLUSIVE CNN-FACEBOOK SOCIAL WATCH: Social media is reflecting rare reverence today - the top three trending terms on Facebook are "President Obama," "country” and “America”... but Hollywood heat still trumps pomp and circumstance. The top moment in terms of volume of traffic on Facebook today was not around Obama’s inaugural address, it was rather around Beyonce’s singing of the national anthem.

TRAIL TRIVIA(Answer below)
What Chief Justice of the United States delivered the most presidential oaths of office and how many times did he do it?

Seeing the world through the eyes of a child is the ultimate Gut Check.

Sure, this is President Barack Obama’s day, but instead of looking at it through the prism of polls and politics, take a minute to look at this picture of Josiah Boprey from Phoenix, Arizona.

When Josiah’s mother, Elisa Boprey, turned to the television during the president’s official swearing in on Sunday, she saw her young son raise his right hand and repeat the words Obama was reciting.

“He looks like me, mom,” said Josiah after the short swearing-in wrapped up.

Josiah is multi-racial; his father is black and his mother is Hispanic.

“I think seeing someone that is like him, that looks like him, and is president, for him to see that at a young age and to have that positive role model, gives him something to strive for,” Elisa told us. “It lets him know that it is possible for him, too.”

the LEDEDid you miss it?

Leading CNNPolitics:Obama's unfinished business and battles ahead: What a difference. Barack Obama assumed the presidency four years ago on a day full of history and hope. The second time around there is less hype, far lower expectations, and no illusions about the capital's political climate. "I just want things to work," then-President-elect Obama told CNN in an interview days before taking office in 2009. To revisit that conversation is to be reminded that on many of the big issues on the original Obama agenda, Washington did anything but work - or at least work together. – John King

Leading HuffPo:Hail To The Chief
The 2013 Inauguration ceremonies to honor the start of President Barack Obama's second term in office include two official Inaugural Balls, a National Day of Service and two swearing-in ceremonies. Thousands flocked to Washington to help Obama kick off his second round in the White House, including notable names like James Taylor, Stevie Wonder, Katy Perry and Beyonce.

Leading Politico:Obama testifies to the power of government
President Barack Obama called on Americans to take action to reverse climate change, reform immigration laws and enact new gun-control measures during an inaugural address devoted to the potential of citizens to drive their government. “You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course,” Obama said from a platform on the West Front of the Capitol Building. “You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.” – Jonathan Allen

Leading The New York Times:Obama Cites Nation’s Ideals in Call to Act
Barack Hussein Obama renewed his oath of office at midday Monday, ceremonially marking the beginning of another four years in the White House and embracing a progressive agenda centered on equality and opportunity. Mr. Obama went out of his way to mention both gay rights and the need to address climate change, in a speech that seemed intended to define his version of modern liberalism, shortly after voters returned him to office for a second term. – Michael D. Shear

TRAIL MOMENTSThe political bites of the day

- President Obama lays out policy, vision for next four years -PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA IN HIS INAUGURAL ADDRESS…On policy: “It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia, to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm.”On bipartisanship: “My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction.”On working together: “For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future. Or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.”

- Biden and Obama: “We’re Totally Simpatico” -VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN IN AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger …When they agree: “What made it work is that if you go back to the days when we were actually competing for the nomination… all those debates we had, the only two people that didn't disagree on any subject were Barack Obama and Joe Biden. So when we got into this deal, we didn't have what other administrations have had, where the vice president and the president have a different take on the major issues of the day. We're totally simpatico. And what developed, and it made it easier, was … it went from a - working with each other to a friendship. I mean we actually - real trust built.”When they don’t: “We made a deal early on, when either one of us are dissatisfied we just flat tell the other person. And so one - lunch once a week, you know, that's when we talk. And when he hasn't liked something I've done, he just flat tells me. He says, ‘Joe, look, I - you know, I - I don't agree with the way you did that. You, you know, why did you do A, B, C or D?’ Or I will say, ‘hey, look, man, I don't like the way this is going, this is what we’… so there's complete openness.”

- A key adviser to Hillary Clinton: don’t doubt her -PHILIPPE REINES, A SENIOR ADVISER TO SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON, IN AN INTERVIEW WITH CNN: “I learned a long time ago not to predict anything about Hillary Clinton. She can do whatever she wants, I think (that) is the beauty of what she's entering. She can pick and choose. There are things that she wants to achieve. She can do them any number of ways. I know that when she is asked and she answers, that's where her head is. I think she has learned to also stop making predictions about life because she, on Election Day 2008, would have also said… she's going to sleep for a few months, get back to the Senate, and here she is.”

- Reactions to Obama’s speech -MATTHEW CONTINETTI IS EDITOR IN CHIEF OF THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON, A CONSERVATIVE PUBLICATION: “It is of course possible that the inauguration of a re-elected president is his moment of maximum triumph. It is of course possible that Obama's second term may turn out like George W. Bush's, when the lyricism and passion of the second inaugural collided with the realities of strategic miscalculations and unexpected events. I have my doubts. What I do not doubt is that the generation of conservatives and Republicans who return one day to power will be forced to reckon with the consequences of the Obama revolution, just as a generation of defeated liberals were forced to confront and in some cases accept the revolution of Ronald Reagan.”BLOGGER ANDREW SULLIVAN: “If you have long believed, as I have, that this man could easily become the liberal Reagan by the end of his second term... then this speech will not have surprised you.”JOHN AVLON, A CNN CONTRIBUTOR: “Obama used his second inaugural address to recast contemporary political debates in the larger sweep of American history, implicitly making the case that the current Democratic Party's agenda is in the mainstream of American history, part of a constant process of forming a more perfect union - with individual freedom heightened best when balanced with community security. It was an audacious speech to the extent that Obama sought to reclaim politicized concepts like American exceptionalism from their conservative contexts, making the case that the combination of diversity and opportunity makes the American Dream possible for each new generation.”

TOP TWEETSWhat stopped us in 140 characters or less

John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain)
Congratulations to President Obama and his family on this Inauguration Day

Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDCNN)
BOOM. Boom. Boom. Women. Gay Rights. Immigration. Again, the second term president more direct than the candidate.

Widely considered the most influential chief justice in history, Marshall’s legacy on the process of swearing in can still be felt today – he was the first justice to wear the black robe during the proceedings. Before Marshall, the justices wore red robes with fur trim and white wigs in all public settings. His practice of a simple black silk robe without wig, which he donned when swearing in the president, remains the American judicial standard.

Other chief justices with a number of presidential swearing-ins under their belt: Roger Taney with seven, Melville Fuller with six, William Rehnquist with five and Earl Warren with four.

Seven presidents were not sworn in by the chief justice, although it is considered customary for the head jurist to do so. The presidents were: George Washington, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Chester Alan Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Most of these situations were in the time period following a presidential death or assassination, like when Johnson was sworn in by Judge Sarah T. Hughes after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.